Speaker 1: We're inextricably woven together with our surroundings, and our surroundings
Speaker 1: give rise to us, and we give rise to our surroundings.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf Y, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is shows On Jack Hofner.
Speaker 1: Shows On. Jack's writing has won a push Card Prize
Speaker 1: and been published in The New York Times, Tricycle the Sun,
Speaker 1: the Best Buddhist Writing Series, Lions Roar, and other publications.
Speaker 1: His first book, Zen Confidential Confessions of a Wayward Monk,
Speaker 1: was chosen as one of NPR's Best Books of two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen and won an Independent Publisher Book Award. His
Speaker 1: new book is Single White Monk Tales of Death, Failure,
Speaker 1: and Bad Sex, although not necessarily in that order. So
Speaker 1: normally at this point in the show, Eric asks the
Speaker 1: listeners to go to one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: support and donate to the show or something thereof. So
Speaker 1: instead of asking you to donate, what I wanted to
Speaker 1: do today was just ask everybody to take an episode
Speaker 1: of the show that you like and share it with
Speaker 1: somebody you care about, because that would be a great
Speaker 1: gift to us and to them and to you because
Speaker 1: sharing feels good. Okay, don't get me started. Here's the
Speaker 1: interview with shows on Jack Hobner. Hi, Jack, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you very much. It's fantastic to be
Speaker 1: here again. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on again.
Speaker 1: You were one of our early guests, so thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on a show that almost nobody knew anything
Speaker 1: about at that point. And your book then was called
Speaker 1: Zen Confidential Confessions of a Wayward Monk, which I absolutely
Speaker 1: loved and and I love the new one just as much,
Speaker 1: and it is called single White Monk Tales of Death, Failure,
Speaker 1: and bad Sex, although not necessarily in that order. I
Speaker 1: heard somebody refer to you as like a Buddhist David
Speaker 1: Sedaris the other day, which is a remarkable compliment, but
Speaker 1: I understand exactly they're getting at, because you have that
Speaker 1: unique ability to be funny and extremely poignant and heart
Speaker 1: wrenching within a sentence or two of each other. And
Speaker 1: that is just such a such a gift in in art.
Speaker 1: So I really enjoyed the book. Oh thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the day that someone says David Sedaris
Speaker 1: is like a secular shows on Jack Hawker. He's washed up.
Speaker 1: I think. I think his best days are behind him. Um,
Speaker 1: your best days are ahead of you, so we should
Speaker 1: be we should be set here. Although I am going
Speaker 1: to see him this Saturday, so hopefully his best days
Speaker 1: are at least a few months away from being, you know, happening,
Speaker 1: because I hope to catch him in a good night anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, what's up, Doc, No, he does
Speaker 1: not what he says at all. He says, he says, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: your work. Yeah, that's a wonderful parable. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on again so I can misinterpret it once more. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. I was thinking, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about this because I just listened to the Robert Thurman interview.
Speaker 1: You guys did. I loved his answer. He said that
Speaker 1: you feed the bad wolf to the good wolf. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an inherent arguably, and not to be
Speaker 1: too pedantic, but there's an inherent dualism, or a dualism
Speaker 1: suggested in the parable. And I never quite know what
Speaker 1: to make of that. I find myself thinking, I'm trying
Speaker 1: not to throw red meat to either of the wolves
Speaker 1: these days. UM. You know, I remember when I first
Speaker 1: did my very first zen retreat. Um, I wasn't even
Speaker 1: remotely prepared for it. Um. It was, you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: hour days of just sitting on a cushion, UM, breathing. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: I just did a zen retreat last weekend. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know, the right, That's what
Speaker 1: I was getting exactly. I mean, all wonderful um, a deep, um, purgative,
Speaker 1: profound experience. And part of it was sitting there and
Speaker 1: listening to the wolves howl within um and starting to
Speaker 1: come to the realization that what I had thought was
Speaker 1: a bad wolf maybe wasn't so bad. Maybe I needed
Speaker 1: to listen a little bit more deeply to what was
Speaker 1: behind it's it's pleased for food um, and a good
Speaker 1: wolf was maybe just uh the ego in in wolf's clothing.
Speaker 1: The practice that I did and I'm so grateful for
Speaker 1: and still doing on a regular basis. Um, I was
Speaker 1: taught that you have then. I mean this is an oversimplification, UM,
Speaker 1: but you know you sit down on your meditation cushion. Um,
Speaker 1: You're doing the most simple activity possible when you meditate
Speaker 1: and it's just breathing. And I was taught that you
Speaker 1: have an inside world in an outside world, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, when you inhale, you're taking in the outside
Speaker 1: world completely. My teacher would say, you have to give
Speaker 1: yourself completely inhale the whole universe. And then that activity
Speaker 1: comes to an end amazingly, profoundly, and then there's a
Speaker 1: zero moment when there's no inhale and no exhale, and
Speaker 1: then the situation reverses itself and you exhale and you
Speaker 1: completely give your interior universe to the outside world. And
Speaker 1: in a very and it sounds a bit um heady
Speaker 1: until you think about the fact that in a very simple,
Speaker 1: basic way, when you breathe, your your becoming your surroundings,
Speaker 1: and your surround you're gonna becoming you. I mean, you
Speaker 1: take an oxygen and it becomes part of your blood stream,
Speaker 1: and it goes into your toes and into your heart,
Speaker 1: and it becomes part of your blood stream and your
Speaker 1: thoughts um. And then when you exhale, your breath becomes
Speaker 1: part of the world around you. It becomes part of
Speaker 1: the trees um, you know. And it's in a similar
Speaker 1: way things are happening through all of our senses. We're
Speaker 1: taking in the sounds from the street and in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles right now, staying at my old apartment that my
Speaker 1: my sister is now living in, and I can hear
Speaker 1: the traffic outside, and you know, the rubber hits the road,
Speaker 1: and there's a sound wave that travels somehow through the
Speaker 1: air or maybe my ear reaches out, because I don't
Speaker 1: know what happens, but there's a connection. There's there's no separation,
Speaker 1: there's a continuum of experience. The sound wave hits my
Speaker 1: ear drum and interacts with my nervous system, and and
Speaker 1: a feeling arises me. A thought eventually appears. It says car,
Speaker 1: and then I have a memory about a car, and
Speaker 1: then I think about how I'm thinking about that memory,
Speaker 1: and they're at the top of experience is what we
Speaker 1: call the I am self right, um, So, bringing this
Speaker 1: full circle to your question, um about about the wolves,
Speaker 1: I if the world's if the wolves are a metaphor
Speaker 1: for the inner life, then then what I've tried to
Speaker 1: do in my practice get out of the way and
Speaker 1: let the inner world in the outer world meet completely,
Speaker 1: and from that meeting, a new moment arises. So so
Speaker 1: rather than looking at it as a good wolf or
Speaker 1: a bad wolf in that dualistic way, more than trying
Speaker 1: to maybe relinquish my notions of good and bad and
Speaker 1: right and wrong and behavior. Um uh, it's completely connected
Speaker 1: and selfless as a way as possible, and then good
Speaker 1: and bad spontaneously arise, right, And I'd like to get
Speaker 1: into the concept of no self a little bit. And
Speaker 1: then I think the tension between good and bad we
Speaker 1: will also explore as we talk about your experiences at
Speaker 1: your form monastery. But I want to go right now
Speaker 1: into because what you said about the wolves ties very
Speaker 1: much to something that was not in this book but
Speaker 1: I read, which was an essay you did on the
Speaker 1: abortion question, which is just brilliant. But I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read part of it because I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to a lot of what you were saying right now,
Speaker 1: and um you say, I have come to see that
Speaker 1: the stumbling block nature of life's deepest questions is not
Speaker 1: necessarily an obstacle to understanding the human condition. Rather, it
Speaker 1: speaks to the very heart of it. Ever, wonder why
Speaker 1: so many of the conflicts at the heart of life
Speaker 1: seem to be logically and ethically unsolvable one way or another.
Speaker 1: Could it be because they are the very conflicts that
Speaker 1: generate life. You wrote that essay a while ago, But
Speaker 1: that does sound very similar to what we were just saying.
Speaker 1: It really does. These are really really deep questions, and
Speaker 1: I struggle with them. So I need to I need
Speaker 1: to be um honest about that. I I don't consider
Speaker 1: myself a moral rel to this, and I and or
Speaker 1: a much less a nihilist um. And oftentimes I get
Speaker 1: instincts that something is right or something is wrong, and
Speaker 1: there's no part of me that's genuine that says, UM,
Speaker 1: ignore that completely because you're a non duels and practitioner.
Speaker 1: So that's not the answer either. The longer I've practiced
Speaker 1: and lived, the more I've come to realize that my
Speaker 1: knee jerk notions of good and bad and right and wrong,
Speaker 1: more often than I'm conscious of, have to do with
Speaker 1: affirming myself and my people and my ideas, and almost
Speaker 1: have more of a Darwinian flavor than a than an
Speaker 1: ethical or moral flavor. And that's something that I have
Speaker 1: to really consider and to sit with. My mentor who
Speaker 1: introduced me to this practice, used to tell me all
Speaker 1: the time dude, It's not about good and evil, right
Speaker 1: and wrong, naughty and nice. It's about where these things
Speaker 1: come from. And that's an interesting question. To good and
Speaker 1: evil have the same source? Is good and all the
Speaker 1: right term for these two halves of what experience? Then
Speaker 1: if they do come from the same source, let's talk
Speaker 1: about this idea of no self for a moment. I'm
Speaker 1: very interested in that. I have studied Buddhism for a
Speaker 1: long time and you know, and practiced, you know, to
Speaker 1: varying degrees, and that is the one sort of topic
Speaker 1: that I largely just sort of went well, that's interesting
Speaker 1: and kind of got back to the other teachings that
Speaker 1: felt practical and useful to me. And without going into
Speaker 1: a ton of detail, I've had some experiences that have
Speaker 1: caused me to revisit that. So let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of when Buddhism says there is no self, because,
Speaker 1: as I was for many years, it's like that doesn't
Speaker 1: make the slightest bit of sense. Clearly, here I am,
Speaker 1: and I feel myself very strongly. So what is it
Speaker 1: that that Buddhism is getting at when it says that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no self or that there's a small
Speaker 1: self and a big self, or there's lots of different
Speaker 1: words for it. Wait, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: fifteen minute interview. I can go now, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: really do not really going to make me go there.
Speaker 1: Not only do you have to go there, you have
Speaker 1: to make it succinct in two minutes. So go. Oh jeez, Louise,
Speaker 1: I am so this is so far above my pay grade. Um,
Speaker 1: I will I will say that the question is humbling,
Speaker 1: and I'm not as un master. I was a monk
Speaker 1: and then a priest, and um, they're far more qualified
Speaker 1: teachers to answer this. But in any event, um, it
Speaker 1: was really helpful to me to get introduced to the
Speaker 1: teaching of of not self. Um. And there's different ways
Speaker 1: to look at it, in different different ways to practice
Speaker 1: with it. So again, I guess I don't want to
Speaker 1: repeat myself, but maybe I'll return to the earlier analogy.
Speaker 1: One thing we can contemplate is and then I was
Speaker 1: asked to contemplate over and over and over at the
Speaker 1: monastery was how does the self arise? So it's interesting
Speaker 1: my teacher never asked me who are you? I mean?
Speaker 1: I got a collection of essays from a bookstore in
Speaker 1: Pasadena Ones called who am I? You know, existentialists debate
Speaker 1: the question, and I had asked that question for many,
Speaker 1: many years. I was attracted to the writings of Nietzsche.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do this in five two minutes. By
Speaker 1: the way, um my noseelf is revolting against that requirement.
Speaker 1: So you know, that was a big question for me
Speaker 1: for a long time. Who am I? Who am I?
Speaker 1: Who am I? First question my teacher asked me was
Speaker 1: where are you? So that's something you can sit with.
Speaker 1: Where am I? Take who off the table? Where am I?
Speaker 1: Am I? In my body? Maybe? But if I lost
Speaker 1: some fingers, would that mean myself is gone? Um? Am
Speaker 1: I within a certain memory, a certain feeling, a certain
Speaker 1: thought kind of? But then there's new feelings and thoughts
Speaker 1: that arise. Um A Buddhism asks you to question what
Speaker 1: my teacher would say. You're standing unconditionally on the I
Speaker 1: am self. Just consider how the self arises and how
Speaker 1: it passes away. So the teaching is not that there
Speaker 1: is no self. That the teaching is the self is
Speaker 1: not fixed, it's not solid. That's the mistake we make,
Speaker 1: and that's the illusion we make. We think that it's
Speaker 1: fixed and that it's solid at its porous and the
Speaker 1: world is coming in and it's giving rise to ourselves.
Speaker 1: And then we are doing a manifest and activity and
Speaker 1: we're interacting with the world. So there's something called angy
Speaker 1: or practiq some some party which is codependent arising. You.
Speaker 1: If this, then that so things do not exist unconditionally
Speaker 1: on their own. The self as an activity, it is
Speaker 1: constantly dying and it's constantly being reborn. So if I
Speaker 1: can just once again try and time make this disantinct
Speaker 1: as possible, and I want to talk about this just
Speaker 1: to make the point that was taught to me that
Speaker 1: I found to be so valuable and the kind of
Speaker 1: the pogative styles them that my teacher taught me, which
Speaker 1: is a technical word, but it refers to a really
Speaker 1: basic principle, which is basically that the self and all
Speaker 1: things arise through relationship. They don't exist unconditionally and independent.
Speaker 1: They are interdependent and arise through relationships. So again, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here in my old living room on a nice
Speaker 1: comfortable blue chair, and I and here the air conditioner
Speaker 1: across the room because it's now over a hundred degrees
Speaker 1: in October and Los Angeles. Um. So again, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a sound wave and it touches my ear and
Speaker 1: it travels across the hairs in my ear drone, and
Speaker 1: it's just an intricate system within the ear canal, and
Speaker 1: the sound wave is being transformed. What happened to that
Speaker 1: sound wave? What happened to that sound And now it's
Speaker 1: inside of me, traveling up my vital cordy through my
Speaker 1: nervous system. It's interacting with my brain, and my brain
Speaker 1: is producing this this thought, Uh, you know hot right now.
Speaker 1: We tend to think of our Yeah, we tend to
Speaker 1: think of ourselves only as like that person that says hot, right,
Speaker 1: and we don't even think about the process that's given
Speaker 1: rise to that thought that we label as I am.
Speaker 1: But we're inextricably woven together with our surroundings, and our
Speaker 1: surroundings give rise to us, and we give rise to
Speaker 1: our surroundings simultaneously. So ultimately, the teaching of mose self
Speaker 1: for me is the teaching of of relationship and um
Speaker 1: complete relationship as a as a metaphysical principle that that
Speaker 1: says at the heart of of how we live. And
Speaker 1: so it's not that there's no self. It's that the
Speaker 1: self is not unconditional. I mean, certainly you are there
Speaker 1: and you are feeling some you know, like like you said,
Speaker 1: you sometimes you feel pain, sometimes you feel pleasure, and
Speaker 1: it's undeniable that you're there. And that's true. There is
Speaker 1: that experience, but but there's something so much deeper that's
Speaker 1: giving rise to that experience. And um, at some point
Speaker 1: you might ask yourself, where does my connection to the
Speaker 1: outside world end? Or where do I end and and
Speaker 1: the outside world begin and vice versa. And I think
Speaker 1: that the question of who is it or what is
Speaker 1: it that these things are occurring to? Who is feeling
Speaker 1: the pain? You know? Or just you know that that
Speaker 1: that sense of and I mean I think for me
Speaker 1: it just it's again it's something I've been been more
Speaker 1: interested in recently, but sort of the self inquiry piece,
Speaker 1: like well, okay, what you know? What am I? It's
Speaker 1: starting by what am I? Not like you kind of did,
Speaker 1: well am I really the body? You know? Am I?
Speaker 1: My my thoughts? Am I? And do that for a
Speaker 1: little bit at least, My experience was to end up
Speaker 1: pretty perplexed as to yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, perplexed is perplexed,
Speaker 1: is okay, So let's move on from that to now
Speaker 1: back to something a little bit easier for us to
Speaker 1: talk about, because ultimately we're describing an experience that we
Speaker 1: don't have words for really. But you say somewhere in
Speaker 1: the book that the worship of success thwarts true fulfillment.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting phrase from a zen monk. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting in that it's a personal experience, right, because
Speaker 1: we would tend to think, well, as en monk, isn't
Speaker 1: really out after success. But but talk to me about
Speaker 1: that quote. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a zen monk,
Speaker 1: but I'm an American too, which means I'm um. I
Speaker 1: grew up within the context of the American dream, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times I've had to look at my
Speaker 1: own spiritual ambition and say, Um, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: that ambition can really drive you to do make remarkable,
Speaker 1: brave choices. On the other hand, it can't keep you
Speaker 1: from letting go of this smarmier, more fame seeking, selfish
Speaker 1: aspects of your character. Um. In that particular essay, I
Speaker 1: was I was really trying to look at how over
Speaker 1: the years I've had these different ambitions and in that essay.
Speaker 1: It was basketball. When I was really young, I had
Speaker 1: this overwhelming drive, despite being um unathletic and small statured,
Speaker 1: I had this drive to be a great basketball player.
Speaker 1: And you know, that drive transformed and more into a
Speaker 1: desire to be a comedian and a filmmaker and a
Speaker 1: screenwriter and an artist. And and that need, that desire,
Speaker 1: that thirst, and what is that a thirst for? I
Speaker 1: mean is it? It's a thirst for approval. It's a
Speaker 1: thirst for recognition, it's a thirst for affirmation. It's a
Speaker 1: thirst for success. And I'm not immune to that. And
Speaker 1: I like to talk about the things that I'm not
Speaker 1: immune to as a monk and a priest, because I
Speaker 1: think that monks and priests don't always talk about those things,
Speaker 1: and that regular not late people feel alone in swimming
Speaker 1: in the you know, undertow of their own um desires.
Speaker 1: And so I like to talk about those things. And
Speaker 1: I mean, if this is more of a life lesson
Speaker 1: in some sense and a monastery lesson, but you know,
Speaker 1: success and fulfillment are are not the same thing. Success
Speaker 1: it's about outward appearances on some level and having the
Speaker 1: outside world affirm you. So moment is aligning with your
Speaker 1: deeper purpose, a purpose that that transcends your UM status.
Speaker 1: It's always amazing to me that we all know that
Speaker 1: on some level, and yet we mostly don't live our
Speaker 1: lives that way. The lure of success is or even
Speaker 1: the lure of success or just the lure of it's
Speaker 1: the next thing that I get. It's, you know, somewhere
Speaker 1: in the book you call it, you know, like around
Speaker 1: the corner, you know what's around the core. Um is
Speaker 1: the thing that is going to bring fulfillment, and how
Speaker 1: we just we know it on some level. But boy,
Speaker 1: is it hard to live that way. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I very much believe in throwing yourself into life and
Speaker 1: engaging with it and not withdrawing from life. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got to be able to let go
Speaker 1: of your need for an outcome. I'm remember I did
Speaker 1: stand up comedy many years ago, and I went to
Speaker 1: this bar and there was this bartender there and we
Speaker 1: had a good um uh working relationship, and he was
Speaker 1: the m C from this open mic night. Remember him
Speaker 1: looking at me one night and um and saying, no
Speaker 1: attachment to an outcome, that's all he said, No attachment
Speaker 1: to an outcome, which I think is one way that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a question in this country, we're so
Speaker 1: status driving, we're so driven by our role in society
Speaker 1: and the amount of money and fame and leverage we have,
Speaker 1: and you know, and my own experience of that, it's
Speaker 1: you're never satisfied. I mean I always thought, more than anything,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a writer and published books. And
Speaker 1: now I have two books and I can look at
Speaker 1: it and kind of laugh and say, now I want free,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it never ends, and they should
Speaker 1: sell better and more people should like him and more
Speaker 1: Amazon reviews, And mean, I go through the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, with with this show is and I talked
Speaker 1: about it a lot, mainly just you know, because I
Speaker 1: just think, as you said, it's important to talk about,
Speaker 1: is that there's no satiation of some of these things.
Speaker 1: You know, if one time you told me we had
Speaker 1: would have gotten as many downloads as we have gotten,
Speaker 1: I would have said, oh, my f and you know,
Speaker 1: like what more I might be? Maybe I am, Maybe
Speaker 1: I am, but I'm not given the number. So so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm just gonna keep it relative there. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm not gonna say how many, but it's
Speaker 1: beyond what I could have imagined in the beginning. And
Speaker 1: yet I'm perfectly capable of being a dissatisfied with that
Speaker 1: if I'm in a certain place, and I'm also perfectly
Speaker 1: capable of being deeply and profoundly grateful and and humbled
Speaker 1: by that. I can, depending on where I'm at, I
Speaker 1: can look at that same number completely differently. And I
Speaker 1: think that's I tell a story sometimes I don't think
Speaker 1: I've told in the while. But I was in a
Speaker 1: halfway house when I first got sober, and there was
Speaker 1: a water fountain. I used to call it the serenity fountain,
Speaker 1: because the way the building was wired up was that
Speaker 1: whatever Einstein did it, if somebody on the first floor
Speaker 1: in the basement turned on the water, nobody else got
Speaker 1: water on any of the other floors. And so I
Speaker 1: would turn that fountain on, I would get no water.
Speaker 1: Or conversely, I would, you know, get no water, and
Speaker 1: I'd look at it and suddenly I would get like
Speaker 1: a super powerful stream of water. And it was always
Speaker 1: that way, And there were plenty of days where I
Speaker 1: just laughed about it, and then there were other days
Speaker 1: where I got so bent out of shape about the
Speaker 1: damn thing. And it was the same fountain day after
Speaker 1: day after day, and it was just such a clear
Speaker 1: lesson to me early on for me that like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm really the one that's deciding. Deciding is maybe a
Speaker 1: wrong word, but my perception is at the root of
Speaker 1: of how I experienced this, and I think that's also
Speaker 1: a pretty key Buddhist lesson. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's about sums it all up. Um, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very tricky, and it's easy to say
Speaker 1: the thirst for successes is bad. Let me give you
Speaker 1: an example, like if someone emails me and says I
Speaker 1: needed company when I was going through a dark night
Speaker 1: of the soul and reading a chapter of your book
Speaker 1: made me realize that everybody goes through this and it
Speaker 1: helped put my heart at rest. I can feel fulfillment
Speaker 1: in that. That's one thing. Checking my Amazon ranking obsessively
Speaker 1: it's like another that's the first. But yeah, the same
Speaker 1: activity of writing a book. You know, writing a book
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily the problem or having a podcast or doing
Speaker 1: public things where it's really easy to get caught up
Speaker 1: an ego and numbers and attention and money and all
Speaker 1: that the activity of writing the book the podcast isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the problem in a lot of ways, holding true
Speaker 1: to your integrity and and your original purpose and not
Speaker 1: getting too caught up in the winds and the storms
Speaker 1: of what society throws at you in terms of praise
Speaker 1: of blame, yep, and and motivation behind it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like I could say some of these things
Speaker 1: on the show often, but like I've gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where I'm not sure that I'm okay with the
Speaker 1: fact that most everything I do has some degree of
Speaker 1: mixed motivation. I don't know how to not have that happen.
Speaker 1: I just I'm just like, how can I How can
Speaker 1: I spend my time and my energy and focus on
Speaker 1: the good motivation and minimize the bad motivation. So if
Speaker 1: I look at it and I'm feeling discouraged, like well,
Speaker 1: we're just not growing as fast as that show or
Speaker 1: that show, right, I go back to like, well, what
Speaker 1: was I Why am I doing this? Why did I
Speaker 1: start doing this? And that wasn't why I started doing this,
Speaker 1: And so if I can reconnect with that sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: that that helps on a similar level of looking forward
Speaker 1: to everything, I just want to read this, and you're
Speaker 1: one of those folks that I just like to read
Speaker 1: a lot of it because it's it's just written so well.
Speaker 1: But you say, my whole life, I've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to something, and now it hit me like the wake
Speaker 1: up slap on the newborns behind It was almost comical,
Speaker 1: What the hell have I been looking forward to? Except
Speaker 1: the end? That's what comes next. The few uture is
Speaker 1: the finish line. That's what's finally waiting for us around
Speaker 1: the next corner. And I just love that because it
Speaker 1: is the logical extension of this fallacy that we have,
Speaker 1: that it's the next You know, if I could just
Speaker 1: get to this then right. I wrote that in the
Speaker 1: context of an opium high and uh a delivery of
Speaker 1: a death sentence. So I should probably unpack that a
Speaker 1: little bit. Um. I had experienced some horrifying pains in
Speaker 1: my um lower left abdomen. It felt like I swallowed
Speaker 1: a fish hook and someone was tugging the line and
Speaker 1: tearing me open inside. It was quite painful. Is that
Speaker 1: the monastery, and I was on the premises alone. So
Speaker 1: finally I called nine eleven nine month and they can't
Speaker 1: pick me up. Brought me to the emergency room, took
Speaker 1: a bunch of tests and gave me dilatted to kill
Speaker 1: the pain, which is a morphine drivative. In the opening,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar. So yeah, as an ex heroin addict, I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar. There you go. Yeah, So, I mean, in
Speaker 1: a much smaller way, I felt that on the believable
Speaker 1: feeling that's apparently opium gives you, which kind of floating
Speaker 1: in the clouds kind of ecstasy. Just as that was
Speaker 1: kicking in, a nurse came into the room and she
Speaker 1: told me that they looked at the blood tests and
Speaker 1: they had my enzyme levels UM were really elevated. And
Speaker 1: she went on to tell me that in her this
Speaker 1: is life pace anamalies, which are enzymes having to do
Speaker 1: with the pink pancreas. And she said, in my experience,
Speaker 1: this means cancer. And she said, I don't see what
Speaker 1: else it could mean UM, And she said, also in
Speaker 1: my experience is that it's um. You don't outlive this cancer.
Speaker 1: She said, you know, Paparatti, the opera singer, just just
Speaker 1: died from it. And then she kind of smiled surely
Speaker 1: and left the room. So I had been experiencing this
Speaker 1: it was funny. It was really trying trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what's wrong with me. The whole morning, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? I think
Speaker 1: it's really bad food poisoning. And as the as the
Speaker 1: pain got worse and worse at a while, I just
Speaker 1: heard a radio show on NPR where they said, you
Speaker 1: can die from food poisoning, so it must be food poisoning.
Speaker 1: And then when you told me this was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have an answer to the problem. It's it's cancer. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in that moment um when I got this
Speaker 1: death sentence and I looked out and I had the
Speaker 1: morphine kicking in. I kind of looked through the plastic
Speaker 1: curtain that was separating my little um deathbed from the
Speaker 1: other death and suffering the cubicles in the e R.
Speaker 1: I saw this real flurry of activity, and I had
Speaker 1: this moment of of kind of being at peace with
Speaker 1: the fact that my story was coming to an end.
Speaker 1: Now I'm the cancer guy. You know, my life was
Speaker 1: not supposed to be any other way. I was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the guy who did a little bit of this,
Speaker 1: did a little bit of that, brought some pleasure brought
Speaker 1: some pain. Um lived his life and is now going
Speaker 1: to die of cancer. And I felt at peace with that.
Speaker 1: And the idea that I was supposed to have done
Speaker 1: something more. I was supposed to have been something more,
Speaker 1: supposed to have found my bliss in some more concrete
Speaker 1: and tangible way was bolder dash. My life was perfect
Speaker 1: as it was. It was perfectly me sized, perfectly me shaped,
Speaker 1: and there's no other standard that it could be judged by.
Speaker 1: It was mine completely. It had its own integrity, and
Speaker 1: that felt good. And it wasn't an ego inflating thought.
Speaker 1: It was a It was a humbling, grounding thought that
Speaker 1: really gave rise to a sense of gratitude. And then
Speaker 1: you found out it wasn't true. I found out I
Speaker 1: wasn't there. Then I got really depressed. Wasn't gonna die?
Speaker 1: And I got really depressed? Did you I was? I
Speaker 1: was ready for it. I was ready to go. And
Speaker 1: then and then the new thing was I got to
Speaker 1: get back on my feet again. And it took me
Speaker 1: months and months and months to pull out of this
Speaker 1: funk of why did I get sick? Am I still sick?
Speaker 1: Is the pancreat It is gonna come back? What's wrong
Speaker 1: with me? And I take different homeopathic or western medicine
Speaker 1: stuff and they would have a side effect that would
Speaker 1: plunge me deeper into this body and mental darkness. And
Speaker 1: then finally I at zazen in my parents garage, sitting
Speaker 1: on a chair with the door open and the pounding
Speaker 1: rain outside, and something shifted and I I wanted to
Speaker 1: sort of get my life in here again, and I
Speaker 1: went back to the monastery and here we are. Here,
Speaker 1: we are well we This is gonna be a two
Speaker 1: part episode, so we're gonna wrap this up, but a
Speaker 1: little teaser for next section. We're gonna cover Zen sex scandals.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about Leonard Cohen and ayahuasca. So that's
Speaker 1: enough to that's enough to bring bring folks back for
Speaker 1: the next episode. So we will end here and pick
Speaker 1: up again the next episode. Great, Thank you, see you soon. Okay,
Speaker 1: if what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support